If God is God He is not good, if God is good He is not God; take the even, take the odd.

Autumn is the American season. In Europe the leaves turn yellow or brown, and fall. Here they take fire on the trees and hang there flaming. We think this frost-fire is a portent somehow: a promise that the continent has given us. Life, too, we think, is capable of taking fire in this country; of creating beauty never seen.

Writers . . . write to give reality to experience.

Beauty is that Medusa's head which men go armed to seek and sever, and dead will starve and sting forever.

Piety's hard enough to take among the poor who have to practice it. A rich man's piety stinks. It's insufferable.

The roots of the grass strain, Tighten, the earth is rigid, waits-he is waiting- And suddenly, and all at once, the rain!

The American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens. Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians have attempted to exploit it.